Author: biblicalgenderroles

Jesus Christ said in Luke 6:31 “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise”. This statement is often referred to as the “Golden Rule”. The most common interpretation of this passage that is taught today is “Treat others as you would want to be treated if you were in their situation”. And that is actually a pretty accurate interpretation of what Christ was saying.

Over two and a half centuries since it’s founding, many Americans have used the “Golden Rule” to push their culture and government for new social acceptances and legal protections regarding marriage, gender roles and sexual behavior in America. Below is a list of some these major changes.

20 Ways America Has Applied the “Golden Rule” to Gender Roles and Sex Over Two Centuries

As men, we should want women to have the right to own property, because if we were in their shoes that is what we would want.

As men, we should want women to be able to divorce their husbands in the same way and for the same reasons that men divorce their wives because if we were in their shoes that is what we would want.

As men, we should want women to have the same custody rights to their children in divorce as men do, because if we were in their shoes that is what we would want.

As men, we should want women to have the right to alimony and child support as they divorce their husbands, because if we were in their shoes that is what we would want.

As fathers, we should never try to control or pressure our daughters in regard to their love lives, what men they see or what men they seek to marry because if we were in their shoes this is not how we would want to be treated.

As men, we should want women to vote, because if we were in their shoes that is what we would want.

As men, we should not want women excluded from any careers, because if we were in their shoes this is not how we would want to be treated.

As Christian men, we should want Christian women to be able to hold any position in the church that a man can hold including that of being a Pastor, because if we were in their shoes this is what we would want.

As men, we should not want women forbidden from having abortions, because if we were in their shoes, we would want the right to have an abortion.

As husbands, we should not try to control our wife’s behavior by telling her whether she can work outside the home or not because if we were in her shoes this is not how we would want to be treated.

As husbands, we should not try to control what friends our wife has or talks to because if we were in her shoes this is not how we would want to be treated.

As husbands we should not try to control our wife’s behavior by telling her how much money she can spend on various items because if we were in her shoes this is not how we would want to be treated.

As husbands, we should not try to control what church our wife attends because if we were in her shoes this is not how we would want to be treated.

As husbands, we should not try to pressure our wife in any way to have sex if she is not in the mood or she tells us “no” because if we were in her shoes this is not how we would want to be treated.

As men, we should not look at women as objects of potential visual and physical sexual pleasure because if we were women we would not want to be looked at in this way.

As men, we should not seek out women as wives so we can take sexual pleasure in their bodies, so they can bear our children, care for our children and keep our homes while we go and make our mark on the world in our careers. Because after all, if we were women we would not want to be pursued by men for these reasons. But rather as men, we should want women to have the same career opportunities we do and we should want wives strictly for human companionship and as equal partners that we can share our lives with and not as “sex objects”, “breeding machines”, “nannies”, “cooks” and “maids”.

As husbands, we should not enjoy the sight of or think of any other woman other than our wives in a sexual manner because if we were women, we would not want our husbands enjoying the sight or thought of any other woman but us.

As heterosexual people, we should want homosexual people to be made to feel comfortable actively their lives as homosexuals and we should want them to have the right to marry just as we heterosexuals do. Because after all, if we were homosexuals that is how we would want to be treated.

As cisgender people, we should want transgender people to be made to feel comfortable being transgender and not as if they have a mental disorder. Because after all, if we were transgender, that is how we would want to be treated.

As cisgender heterosexual Christians, we would should want homosexual and transgender persons to be able to join our churches as members and even lead our congregations as clergy.

I have made an effort in the list above to try and put the changes in chronological order. In the beginning of the list you will note women’s rights changes in regard to property and divorce rights which occurred from the mid-19th century up to the beginning of the 20th century. These rights were fought for by women and granted to them before their crowning achievement of Woman’s Suffrage in 1920. Also note that just before talking about women voting I talk about women not wanting to be under their father’s authority for marriage. This started in the late 19th century with the advent of the new practice of “dating” which encouraged women to reject their father’s authority over them in seeking a husband.

Then of course as the list progresses, we see the new changes that Second Wave Feminism brought us in regard to telling men what they should want women and marriage for. And finally, we see the changes that have occurred over the last decade regarding the treatment of LGBTQ persons.

As we look at the list above there is a key word, we must take notice of. And that key word is “want”.

Anyone seeking to apply Christ’s statement in Luke 6:31, otherwise known as the “Golden Rule”, must take into account what God says we should want. Failure to do this will cause the gross misapplication we have seen of the “Golden Rule” in America over the past two centuries.

In the Gospel of Matthew we read an extended version of the “Golden Rule”:

“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”

Matthew 7:12 (KJV)

What was Christ saying here? He was saying that the entire foundation of the “Golden Rule” is the Word of God, the Bible. And what is the foundation of all moral truth in the Bible? The answer is given to us by Christ later in the Gospel of Matthew:

“36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Matthew 22:36-40 (KJV)

So, the greatest command is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, our soul and our mind. And the second one, to love our neighbor as our self, is built upon the first. Christ was quoting two commands from the Law of Moses.

The first is found in the book of Deuteronomy:

“And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”

Deuteronomy 6:5 (KJV)

The second is found in the book of Leviticus:

“Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.”

Leviticus 19:18 (KJV)

Now here comes the million-dollar question. How do we as Bible believing Christians know if we are loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves by God’s definition? The answer is given to us near the end of the New Testament in the following Scripture passage:

“2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.

1 John 5:2 (KJV)

The definition of loving God, loving our neighbors and following Christ’s “Golden Rule” is all premised upon one simple truth.

That we are keeping God’s commands in all we do. That we love what he loves. That we hate what he hates. That we want for ourselves what he wants for us.

This Scriptural truth I have just mentioned runs directly contrary to the vast majority of American teaching both outside and sadly even inside most Christian churches today. We no longer want to adjust our wants and desires to what God wants us to want. But instead we are trying to transpose on to God our wants and desires. Today we actually have churches teaching that God is a feminist and that he is pro-LGBTQ.

The Scriptures actually warn of this time coming and at the same time they command for those of us who are faithful to God’s Word to call out this wickedness:

“2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.

3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

5 But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.”

2 Timothy 4:2-5 (KJV)

We Must Change Our Wants to What God Wants for Us

David wrote by the inspiration of God what should be the desire of every man and woman who seeks to please God with their lives and show their love for him:

So now we must tackle the question of what God wants for men and women which should determine what men and women want for themselves.

Should Women Want Equal Rights with Men?

While Genesis 9:6 tells us that men and women are both made in the image of God, we find in 1 Corinthians 11:7 that only man “is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man”. And later in that same passage in I Corinthians 11:9 we read “Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man”.

In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he gives us God purpose and design in marriage:

“23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. 24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. 29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church”

Ephesians 5:23-29 (KJV)

In 1 Corinthians 14:35 the Apostle Paul further elaborated on the husband’s duty to be his wife’s spiritual authority and teacher:

“And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.”

1 Corinthians 14:35 (KJV)

And the Apostle Peter gave the following exhortation to women:

“5 For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: 6 Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.”

I Peter 3:5-6 (KJV)

God created marriage as picture of the relationship between himself and his people. God is pictured as husband to Israel in the Old Testament and Christ is pictured as a husband to his Church in the New Testament. Men as husbands picture God in leading, teaching, correcting, rebuking, providing for and protecting their wives as Christ does his church. Women as wives picture the people of God in their submission to, service to and dependence upon their husbands for their spiritual leading and teaching as well as their physical provision and protection.

Based upon the clear teachings of the Scriptures shown above we can see that women should have no want or desire for equality with men and that they instead should want to be under the authority of men in all areas of their lives whether it is civil government, the church or in their marriage.

Should Daughters Want to Be Free of Their Father’s Authority Before They Are Married?

The Scriptures give us the following commands regarding a father’s authority over his daughter:

“2 If a man vow a vow unto the Lord, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth.

3 If a woman also vow a vow unto the Lord, and bind herself by a bond, being in her father’s house in her youth; 4 And her father hear her vow, and her bond wherewith she hath bound her soul, and her father shall hold his peace at her; then all her vows shall stand, and every bond wherewith she hath bound her soul shall stand.

5 But if her father disallow her in the day that he heareth; not any of her vows, or of her bonds wherewith she hath bound her soul, shall stand: and the Lord shall forgive her, because her father disallowed her.”

Numbers 30:2-5 (KJV)

“Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished.”

Jeremiah 29:6 (KJV)

“16 And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. 17 If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins.”

Exodus 22:16-17 (KJV)

There is a reason that we have fathers walk their daughters down the aisle and then we have the traditional statement at weddings “who gives this woman to be wed” and before modern times it was not “her mother and I” but rather it was her father alone saying “I do”.

This tradition is actually firmly rooted in the Word of God as is shown in the passages above. In God’s design fathers give or refuse their daughters for marriage and men take women in marriage with the permission of the woman’s father.

Now there are of course exceptions to this rule when women are widows like in the story of Ruth and Boaz (Ruth 3:8-9). Also, the Bible makes an exception for this rule of having the father’s permission when men take wives as the spoils of war as seen in Deuteronomy 21:11-14.

Based upon the clear teachings of the Scriptures shown above we can see that a daughter should want to be under her father’s authority before marriage and she should want his direction and blessing for marriage.

Should people want to be LGBTQ or live the LGBTQ lifestyle?

The Scriptures have the following things to say in regard to LGBTQ persons:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

Genesis 1:27 (KJV)

“The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.”

Deuteronomy 22:5 (KJV)

“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

Leviticus 20:13 (KJV)

“26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.”

Romans 1:26-27 (KJV)

Based upon the clear teachings of the Scriptures shown above we can see that no person should want to be made comfortable being any part of LGBTQ. But rather such persons should be ashamed of such desires.

Should Men Want Women for Sex, Having Children and Caring for their Homes?

The Scriptures give the following exhortations to young women:

“I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.”

1 Timothy 5:14 (KJV)

“4 That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, 5 To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.”

Titus 2:4-5 (KJV)

And the Scriptures gives the following exhortation to men:

“18 Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. 19 Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.”

Proverbs 5:18-19 (KJV)

Based upon the clear teachings of the Scriptures shown above we can see that men should indeed desire to marry young women for sexual pleasure, for them to bear children and for them to guide and keep their homes.

Conclusion

I have shown here conclusive proof from the Bible that in order to properly apply the “Golden Rule” Christ gave that we must take into account what God wants us to want and what he wants others to want.

For instance, often times as parents we will find that our children do not want to do the things they should want to do. They should want to do their homework and get good grades. But sometimes they simply do not want to do their homework.

Now if we were to put ourselves in their shoes at their age, we may have felt the same way. But does that mean we should let them not do their homework? Of course not. Their want is WRONG. It is not what God wants them to want.

In the same way men are not breaking Christ’s “Golden Rule” by wanting women as wives for sexual pleasure, for them to bear children and for them to guide and keep their homes. And men are not wrong for wanting to lead, teach and mold their wives as they see fit according to the Word of God.

A man is no more wrong for wanting to control and guide his wife’s actions than a parent is for wanting to control and guide their child’s actions.

Some may say “but women are not children” and that is a very true and Biblical statement. But it is equally true and Biblical to state that women are not men either. In other words, children are not equal with women, but also women are not equal with men.

It is modern society that has invented two new social classes, Adults and Minors. But God’s design has three social classes, Men, Women and Children.

And finally, on the topic of LGBTQ persons and how the “Golden Rule” applies to them. Clearly no LGBTQ person should be “proud” of their sinful desires, but rather they should be ashamed of them and seek help to overcome such wicked desires.

Christians are not breaking Christ’s “Golden Rule” in refusing to make LGBTQ persons comfortable in their wicked desires nor in refusing to allow them to become members of or clergy in churches.

Secular Liberals are absolutely right about one thing that many Christians refuse to accept. There is absolutely an “intersectionality” between women’s rights and LGBTQ rights. LGBTQ rights are a direct result of the Women’s Right’s Movements of the mid 19th Century. This is a reality that Bible believing Christians must face and address in their churches.

So what is the “Golden Rule” when understood in the entire context of the Bible?

We should do unto others as God would desire us to want done to ourselves if we were in their position.

So, I get up this morning to check my email BGR inbox and it is blowing up with several regular readers of mine telling me that I have been doxed.

If you are wondering what it means to be “doxed” here is the definition:

“to publicly identify or publish private information about (someone) especially as a form of punishment or revenge”

An ex-democrat staffer was recently sentenced to 4 years in jail for doxing Republican senators during the Brett Kavanaugh hearing so that people would show up at their homes or call their wives to intimidate them.

Since starting this ministry 5 years ago, I have had multiple people think they have found out who I am. In the first year of my blog there was a flurry of people trying to figure out who I was.

I had one person in 2015 think they found me on Facebook based on this statement I made in my about me page:

“I am a mid thirties,white male. I was born in and lived around south-eastern Michigan for most of my life. I was divorced and remarried and I have children from a previous marriage. Total marriage experience exceeds more than 15 years.

I will give my first name, and that is Larry. According to http://howmanyofme.com – there are approximately 957,652 men in the United States with my first name. So If you think you can some how find out which one of those almost 1 million guys I am, go for it!”

They zoomed in on “south-eastern Michigan”, that my name first name was “Larry”, that I was a Baptist, had 5 children and a wife who was a nurse but now disabled. Of course, they were wrong in who they thought I was. But at that time, I decided to remove that I had lived in south-eastern Michigan just to make it a bit more difficult and avoid the annoyance.

Then the same guy comes back about a year later with another Larry from south eastern Michigan who I supposedly was and he was wrong yet again. But this time I did not point out his mistake, because I did not want him to keep learning from it by playing 20 questions with me.

The first public “outing” of me that went viral was that I was that I really was Matt Perkins, a non-Christian who is a biblical studies scholar who was just trolling people.

Then I was Lawrence Hamm from Pearl River, Louisiana.

So, attempts to dox me are nothing new and something I have had to deal with for years but what happened this weekend was new.

I don’t know if this is the same researcher from 2015 and he or she has been obsessed with finding me for the last four years or if this is a totally different researcher. I am thinking it is someone different because this time he or she did not come to me to get a reaction first, he or she just gave his theory of who I was to another blogger to attempt to expose me. Also, this guy or gal did A LOT more data mining and matching on Facebook than the other guy did. This guy may actually be a professional private investigator.

I think he centered his search on two different things I have talked about. The first was this statement I made last year when I wrote about my caregiving experience with my disabled wife in my article “Biblical Advice For Caregiver Husbands”:

“My wife was a nurse’s aide and then became a nurse and worked for the same hospital system for almost 20 years before she had her car accident at the end of 2012. She struggled with her weight for years and had a gastric bypass in 2011a little over a year after we were married in 2010she was my second wife – I had to divorce my first wife in 2009 for adultery. See my article “If We Treated Divorce Like Killing” for my exhaustive study and conclusions on divorce from a Biblical perspective.

The gastric bypass actually caused her to have cardiac issues (yes, it is strange and I did not know gastric bypasses could do that but they sometimes do). She had what appeared to be a mild heart attack as a result of complications from the gastric bypass in early 2011. After this she would have times where she experienced light headedness. She had to get on heart medication to regulate her heart. Eventually she had to step down from her nurse manager position on a surgical floor to just being a regular floor nurse again on a contingent basis. This let her work less hours and set her own schedule.”

Then he took statements I had made in several other articles about by son dropping out, getting his GED and becoming a plumbing apprentice and set out to data mine against Facebook for this criterion.

And then “walla” this researcher finds a Larry in south eastern Michigan who married his nurse wife in 2010, she had a gastric bypass in 2011 and he has 4 boys, a girl and one of his sons is a plumber’s apprentice.

Why I am Addressing this Particular Doxing Attempt?

So, there we have it – BGR unmasked right? Well not so fast. But before I point out some flaws in this latest theory of who I am I want to address why I am going public on this one when I did not address the other attempted doxing attempts in the past 5 years. “It’s because he found you!” – no that is not why.

The reason I am addressing this particular doxing attempt is because unlike the other guys that were found on Facebook before(by this researcher or another I do not know) this time I have had the person they are trying to say I am reach out to me because he was harassed on Facebook yesterday.

He had someone send a nasty Facebook message to his account with the doxing links. He reported it to Facebook and also reported the two sites in question that were involved with this latest doxing attempt to their hosting providers for violating terms of use. And then he emailed me to let me know this was happening to him.

He was understandably upset that people had exposed his disabled wife and his 17-year-old daughter online as they were and he is thinking of getting a lawyer to go after both sites in question if the harassment continues and they do not remove the offending pages. While it is still legal technically to dox people over the age of 18 using public sources it is in fact illegal what they did in exposing this man’s 17-year-old daughter.

I sent back to him that he needs to lock down his Facebook better and talk to his wife and kids about it as well to which he replied that he had already done so. I also suggested he take a screen shot and perhaps let his local police know about the harassment he received on Facebook. He is taking many steps today to protect his family because of this assault on them and this is very sad to see.

Debunking This Latest Doxing Attempt

Anyone who has read my blog for any length of time knows that I regularly receive emails from people who give me their stories and then choose some and write blog posts on their questions and concerns. One of the things I do whenever publishing someone’s story is I change their personal details. And the most common personal details I change are how many years married, what year they were married and how many kids they have.

A recent example is a little over a week ago when I published “How Should a Christian Wife Deal with A Cheating Husband?” I published a woman’s story who is a commenter on this blog and goes by the handle “Soul Fruit Sister”. I changed a bunch of details about her story with the number of children involved and that her husband got this woman pregnant before they were married. After I published it she wanted me to change that back to the real situation which was he had a child with a woman while they were separated and so I did that for her.

I did the same thing with own story from the beginning of this blog and in subsequent posts I wrote about it.

I changed the year of my marriage, when my wife had her accident and surgery. I was actually surprised this researcher was able to data mine at that level to find a woman who was nurse, had a car accident and had previously had a gastric bypass. And he was able to actually find someone within the years I mentioned! That was an accomplishment.

I will fully admit this guy or gal is very good at their job. The problem is just as with Soul Fruit Sister and myriads of letters I have written over the years he got the dates wrong because I gave false years and times.

But not only was his dating mining based on faulty dates, but there is a far more important reason his dating mining was wrong. This is something I have held back since the beginning of this blog.

When I started this blog, I knew I was going to be talking a lot about my own marriage in trying to help other men and help couples having better and more Biblical marriages. And because I love my wife despite our problems we have had, I wanted to protect her from public shame. I have seen some husbands shame their wives by name in other discussion forums and would have no part in that. Besides that, I know there are a bunch of crazies out there.

I knew in order to share my experiences as well as being able to talk about my kids I would need to do exactly what I do for others who write me – change the year I was married and also change my number of kids. So, changing the year of marriage was easy. But then what about the number of kids? Should I make it one less or one more? Whoever this person that researched my blog and looked at earlier versions of pages will see I went between 3 and 5 kids in beginning and for a time I took out all the number of my kids. At some points I said 3 kids, then changed to 5 kids and then blanked the number all together. That was me going below and above the number of kids I actually have.

And that brings me to the biggest item that would throw a monkey wrench in this researcher’s work. I have 4 children, not 3 children and not 5 children. Now if I count the child my first wife and I lost that is in heaven (we lost the child early in the pregnancy) I do have 5 children. And often when people ask me how many kids I have I tell them “4 living and 1 in heaven”.

Whoever he is – he can check my entire blog(and older versions of pages as he does) and the comments sections and see that while I have talked about my two older sons, my daughter and recently my youngest son I have never said anything about my 5th child which would be a son. Why? Because I have no living 5th child. The child I have in heaven I do not know the gender of because we lost them before we could find out.

And no, I am not going to mention this poor other guy’s name or expose him or his wife and daughter to any more issues than he is already facing with this.

I will just leave you all with the following interesting statistics from Wikipedia of where I live in south-eastern Michigan since the cat is out of the bag :

“With 4,488,335 people in 2010, Metro Detroit was the tenth largest metropolitan area in the United States, while Ann Arbor’s metropolitan area ranked 141st with 341,847. Metropolitan areas of Southeast Michigan, and parts of the Thumb and Flint/Tri-Cities, are grouped together by the U.S. Census Bureau with Detroit-Warren-Livonia MSA in a wider nine-county region designated the Detroit–Ann Arbor–Flint Combined Statistical Area (CSA) with a population of 5,428,000.”

So, I am now a needle in a much smaller haystack than the entire country. But 5.5 million people across the entire south eastern part of Michigan and all its towns and cities is still a fairly large haystack.

And a few more things I want to mention. I was never a Facebook person before I did this blog. I operated more on discussion forums. I started my first Facebook account specifically for this blog and at the same time I made sure my wife and children strictly locked down their Facebook accounts. So, for whomever is doing this research – he or she won’t be able to data mine my wife’s Facebook looking for another woman who was a nurse, had a gastric bypass and a car accident.

This is one way I know whoever did this did not hack Facebook and they do not work for Facebook because if they did, they would have found the real me based off my Biblical Gender Roles Facebook page because I buy ads and those ads are tied to my payment information. And Facebook has made me confirm my identity multiple times with my phone over the years because of people claiming I was a Facebook troll.

With that being said I am strongly considering dropping my Biblical Gender Roles Facebook page just in case someone in the future at Facebook wants to try and leak my real behind the scenes info from that page or some hacker gets into it.

It really is sad the world we live in both on the alt right and the hard left we have these folks – who are always anonymous themselves, trying to out other anonymous people as a method of intimidation and really social terrorism.

While I will fully admit that doxing occurs both on the alt right and the hard left (and both are wrong) we really seem to see doxing happening more with the hard left in concert with their allies in the tech oligarchies known as Facebook, Twitter and Google. So basically if you say anything that is not accepted by this hard left socialist order – Facebook will ban you, Twitter will ban you and Google will make your search results go away and then the doxers will swoop in to harass you in your personal life.

Over the past year, with every article I have posted on Facebook they get marked as “violating community standards” and I have to go through a process to get them back up for people to see. Even then I think Facebook is lowering my exposure – even when I pay for ads. This is another big reason I think I am just going to drop my Facebook presence from my real Facebook account and page that I started for this blog.

I had one of my regular readers who has been reading on my blog for a few years comment last week that he noticed Google changing where my pages show up. I told him I had noticed that too and a significant drop page in page hits from searches over the last year.

I am hoping that one day the government will expand laws surrounding doxing to put people like this in jail like the congressional staffers who just recently went to jail. It is really is sad that this other person was caught up in this and that my ministry can be harassed in this way when the truth is I am simply teaching what the vast majority of Americans used to believe (like our founders) about the proper way that families, marriage and societies should organized.

And here are few more statistics for people to chew on as far as the numbers of nurses, people who gastric bypasses and and how many plumbers apprentices there are each year.

Are men wrong for finding educated, opinionated and boisterous women unattractive? And conversely, is it wrong for men to desire women that are “quiet” and “delicate”? The answer according to Paul Maxwell is a resounding “yes” to both of these questions. And he condemns men for having these preferences toward women and admonishes such men to “grow” as in “grow up” and get with the times. He says men need to stop being “insecure” in finding such women who are “outperforming men” in areas of education and their careers as “intimidating”. Instead he argues that men need to rethink and change what they find valuable in women so that they will find “female strength captivatingly attractive”.

And Paul Maxwell is not some secular feminist. In fact, he is a Christian blogger who often speaks against feminism in churches. He attempts to base his argument that men should in fact be attracted to loud and boisterous women on the Bible. The question is, did he succeed in trying to build his argument on the Scriptures?

I understand why we believe these things. It’s a nice story. It makes sense of the success of some women to find husbands, and the failure of others. As Christians (and as humans), we feel very clever when we get to diagnose the cause and cure of singleness. “You’re too opinionated.” “You’re too boisterous.” “A woman should be small, quiet, and delicate.

Yet, it’s easy to forget in the midst of all our diagnosing: whether a woman is “intimidating” is a factor of male perception, not female personality. Do we want women to be less intimidating? That’s a question to be put to men who experience them as such, and we can only wait for such men to grow. The real question we need to ask is: Do we want women to be weak? And the answer must forever be, on the basis of Scripture, “May it never be.””

Maxwell tells us that when men seek women that are quiet, delicate and less educated that they are in fact seeking women that are weaker and “on the basis of Scripture” he tells us men should never be looking for these “weak” women as he calls them.

But What Does God say about Quiet Women?

Right from the outset, Maxwell shows his disdain for men who “like a quiet woman”. But listen to what the Scriptures below say about quiet women.

“1 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;

2 While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.

3 Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;

4 But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.

5 For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands:

6 Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.

I Peter 3:1-6 (KJV)

Mr. Maxwell thinks men are wrong for placing high value on a woman having a quiet spirit. But God says that women who have a “meek and quiet spirit” are of “great price” which would mean “great value” in his sight. So right out of the gate we can see that Mr. Maxwell has built his entire premise in direct contradiction to the explicit teachings of the Word of God.

Then to support the false opening premise of his article, Mr. Maxwell does what a lot of liberal Christians do and he engages in using examples of women doing various things in the Bible as the basis of his false belief when we have clear Scripture statements to the contrary as we have just shown above.

Strong Women Reject the Requests of Evil Men?

Maxwell tells us that “strong women expose evil men” and he give us the story of Jael in Judges 4:21 who drove a peg into the Canaanite General Sisera. He tells us the following of Jael:

“Thank God Jael wasn’t meek and submissive and respectful toward this friend of her wayward husband. She wasn’t one to be trampled on. Strong women reject the requests of evil men.”

Does God tell women to reject the requests of evil men or does he tell women to reject evil requests from any man? I would argue the answer is the latter. Acts 5:29 tells us that “We ought to obey God rather than men” and 1 Timothy 5:22 tells us we are not to “be partaker of other men’s sins”.

In fact, the Bible says the opposite of what Mr. Maxwell has just said. God actually tells women to obey the requests of evil men as long those requests are not sinful in nature.

A man who does not “obey the word” is by nature a sinful man, and could in fact be an evil man. God tells women to submit to men who “obey not the word”. A woman’s submission to her husband IS NOT conditioned on him being a good and obedient man to God.

Jael did not reject Sisera’s request because he was an evil man or because his request was evil but rather, she rejected his request and instead killed him because he was an enemy of her people and God wanted him to die. The story of Jael is not a model for the normal relationship that God meant there to be between men and women, especially that of husbands and wives.

Strong Women Rebuke Good Men?

Maxwell next tells us that “Strong women rebuke good men” and he gives us the example of Abigail in I Samuel 25:39.

Maxwell states:

“David was attracted to this strong woman for her strength, for her rebuke, and for her character. Abigail made life harder for David…

Strong women rebuke good men, who need help in their weaknesses, who need someone to help them see how to be strong.”

NOTHING in this passage says Abigail rebuked David. But rather she humbled herself before him constantly calling him “my lord” and then David said this of what she said to him:

“32 And David said to Abigail, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which sent thee this day to meet me:33 And blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand.”

1 Samuel 25:32-33 (KJV)

Abigail did not come to David to rebuke him, but rather to humbly plead with him and to give him advice.

Strong Women Raise Believing Men

Maxwell in this section reveals how his upbringing shaped his view of the role of women. His father was not in the picture at an early age and his mother had to raise him doing the job of two parents. Below are a few statements he makes based on the reality that sometimes women are abandoned by their husbands and must raise children on their own:

“In an ideal world, men and women would partner together in their strength. But we live in a world where we need strong women to make men strong, because sometimes there simply are no men there to do it…

in an age when fathers often fail to bestow the gift of faith to their children, the future often hangs on the strength of women to do that gospel work.”

Notice Maxwell’s condescension toward men saying they “often fail in bestowing the gift of faith to their children”. What about women who fail to be the example of a wife and mother God intended them to be? What about fathers who have to take of children whose mother’s abandon them or do not lead a life of faith before their children?

This is an example of how sometimes we cannot see past our own upbringing. This is similar to how children who were abused growing up can tend to see most parents as potential abusers or how women who were raped or molested can tend to see all men as potential rapists and molesters. In this same way Maxwell presents a very dark and dismal view of how men will “often fail” women and children in this world and so we should raise women to prepare for this.

According to Maxwell, in raising women to be ready for the failures of men we must raise them to expose evil men, not submit to any request by evil men (even it if not a sinful request) and also to rebuke good men. In his view, we should raise our daughters to be loud and opinionated, rather than quiet and delicate and we should raise them to take men head on in their failings and weaknesses.

But is this really the attitude we want to put in our daughters toward men as they seek marriage?

Men Should Find Women Who Outperform Them to be Attractive?

In the conclusion of his article Maxwell makes the following statement:

“We live in a time when women are outperforming men in many areas of professional and personal competency. And men have two choices: to find female strength captivatingly attractive, or to be insecure and intimidated. Real men love strong women, because God’s glory is beautiful, and “woman is the glory of man” (1 Corinthians 11:7).

Jesus, give men the grace to see the beauty of glorious female strength.”

By what standard is Maxwell saying women “are outperforming men in many areas of professional and personal competency”?

If Maxwell is referring to the fact that more women are in high school honor rolls than men, 70 percent of valedictorians are women and women now represent more than half of college and university students then he is right that women are “outperforming men”.

But does a high GPA in high school and a college degree equal “competency”?

Absolutely not. On the contrary, below are several facts that show men can be and often are more successful in their careers than women despite having lower GPA’s in high school and less representation among college graduates.

And here is something far more important than the facts I have just laid out.

It is absolutely true that God judges a large part of a man’s competency by his ability to make an income that can provide for his wife and children. The reason for this is because man is meant to image God in being a provider to his wife and his family.

The Scriptures tell us God calls on men to provide for the needs of their wives as Christ does his Church:

“28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. 29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church”

Ephesians 5:28-29 (KJV)

A lazy man who has no ambition or desire to work to the best of his ability to provide for his wife and family is not imaging God and is therefore not fulfilling one of the purposes for which God created him. Such a man truly is incompetent in the eyes of God.

However, from God’s perspective, a woman’s competency is not judged by her high school GPA, having a college degree or having a successful career outside her home. Instead, the Bible tells us God judges a woman’s competency by her service to her husband, her children and the affairs of her home.

“I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.”

1 Timothy 5:14 (KJV)

“4 That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, 5 To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.”

Titus 2:4-5 (KJV)

But having showed that Maxwell’s understanding of what makes men and women competent does not match God’s view of what makes each gender competent we will now address the “strength” question. Is there a strength that Christian men should find attractive in women?

The answer is yes.

“Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.”

Proverbs 31:25 (KJV)

But what of strength are we talking about here? The strength that is mentioned is found toward the end of Proverbs 31:

“Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.”

Proverbs 31:30 (KJV)

The strength that men should find attractive in women is the strength of their faith which means they fear God and it shows in how they live their lives. As men we should want to find a woman who loves God more than she loves us. Because if she loves God more than she loves us, then she will always love us because God commands her to love us.

“That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children”

Titus 2:4 (KJV)

But if a woman truly fears God, then she will also fear her husband as Ephesians 5:31 and I Peter 3:2 exhorts her to do.

“1 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; 2 While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear [Greek Phobos].”

I Peter 3:1-2 (KJV)

“Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence [Greek Phobeo which has Phobos as its root] her husband.”

Ephesians 5:31 (KJV)

So, while there is certainly this special type of strength, a strength of character and a strength of faith which we as Christian men should admire and be attracted to in women the Bible also tells us there is a type of weakness in women that we as men are to honor and thus be attracted to as well.

“7 Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.”

I Peter 3:7 (KJV)

We are to honor the fact that God has put our wives in a weaker vessel, thus man’s vessel is stronger. So, the question is why did God put women in weaker vessels?

The answer is found in two New Testament passages. The first is seen below:

“7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. 8 For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man. 9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.”

I Corinthians 11:7-9 (KJV)

Do we see anything in the above passage about “the beauty of glorious female strength” as Maxwell earlier alluded to? The answer is absolutely NOT. It tells us that man is “the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man”. Nothing about her glory being her strength. So how does a woman bring a man glory? She brings both God and man glory by playing the role God designed her to play in his creation which is seen in the next New Testament passage:

“22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. 24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. 29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church”

Ephesians 5:22-29 (KJV)

Men should and do find women that embrace their weakness in comparison to men to be attractive. Women who realize that God meant for men to lead, provide for and protect them are actually intoxicating to a lot of men.

When a woman is ashamed of or denies being weaker than a man and denies her need for man’s leadership, provision and protection this makes her unattractive to the vast majority of men.

Why Highly Intelligent and Educated Women are Not Attractive to Men

There is nothing wrong with a wise or prudent woman. In fact, God says these things are good qualities in a wife in the following passages:

“She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.”

Proverbs 31:26 (KJV)

Nothing wrong with a prudent woman (one who exercising good judgement):

“House and riches are the inheritance of fathers: and a prudent wife is from the Lord.”

Proverbs 19:14 (KJV)

But a woman does not need to have a bachelor’s degree in economics or theology or medicine to be a wise woman or prudent woman. A woman with a high school or even a junior high education could turn out to be a very wise and prudent woman from a Biblical perspective.

The reasons why most men are not attracted to highly intelligent and educated women are twofold.

The first is that the Bible tells us that men are to teach and mold their wives:

“And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.”

1 Corinthians 14:35 (KJV)

“1 The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, 2 Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. 3 Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. 4 And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. 5 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

6 O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.”

Jeremiah 18:1-6 (KJV)

Most men want a wife that is teachable and moldable. A woman that will look up to them for both spiritual and worldly knowledge. They want a woman to reverence them as the Scriptures call on women to do and they want their woman to respect them. And a woman who thinks she knows more than her husband will have a much harder time respecting him, this is a simple fact of life.

And this desire in men is both God given. It is not a matter of sinful pride or of a man feeling intimidated by a woman. It is a matter of him knowing what he wants in a woman and what his mission is in life.

The second reason highly intelligent and highly educated women are unattractive to most men is because intelligent and educated women, especially in our modern feminist culture, tend to be contentious with their husbands and they often shame their husbands.

“It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman.”

Proverbs 21:19 (KJV)

“A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping.”

Proverbs 19:13 (KJV)

“A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.”

Proverbs 12:4 (KJV)

Conclusion

The Scriptures tell us there are some types of weakness that we should glory in and honor as seen in the passage below.

“And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

2 Corinthians 12:9 (KJV)

All of us as men and women of God should glory in the fact that God has designed us to need him for his leadership, provision and protection. And women should see their God designed weakness in comparison to men and their need for men to lead them, provide for them and protect them as something to honor about themselves. They should see the glorious part they have to play in being weaker in that they help to paint a beautiful picture of the relationship of Christ to his Church.

So, when women want to compete with men in the areas of physical strength, intelligence, leadership, provision or protection most men rightly find this type of behavior highly unattractive in women. When a woman seeks to outperform her man in these areas or compete with him, she breaks the model of Christ of and the Church.

This is why if a woman truly wants do what God designed her to do and model the church in its relation to Christ then she should seek out a man that is more intelligent, wiser and educated than her and one who can teach her the Word of God. One that can provide for her and protect her.

Real men are not attracted to women who will be contentious with them, shame them or rebuke them.

Real men are not attracted to women who think they must show they have no need of a man and can do it all on their own.

Real men do not seek out women that will compete with them in their ability to lead, provide for or protect their family.

Real men love women that have submissive, teachable, meek and quiet spirits.

Real men honor women who acknowledge their weakness in comparison to men and their need of a man’s strength, his teaching, his leadership, his intelligence, his provision and his protection.

A Baptist Pastor named Grayson Fritts in Knox County Tennessee said God has granted the power to government to arrest and execute homosexuals. He made these statements while preaching from Leviticus 20:13 which says homosexuality is capital crime.

What is also very noteworthy is that Pastor Fritts was also a Knox County police detective for 19 years. He had quietly accepted a buyout a couple weeks ago. Some are calling for his police pension to be reviewed.

He claims that this never affected his job as a police officer equating it to if he worked at Burger King that he would still make food for homosexuals and not do anything to their food because it was his job to do so and this is the same way he carried out his duties as a police officer.

In the recording above, after his initial sermon which caused the media firestorm around him, he made it clear if you listen to his whole sermon, he never called on individual civilians to kill or do anything to homosexuals. He was saying God has invested the civil government with this power to arrest and execute homosexuals.

So those who were saying he was inciting his church members or other civilians to go out as individuals and cause harm to homosexuals are factually incorrect and the recordings of his sermons prove this.

Many Christians on Facebook and elsewhere have said his statements saying he hates homosexuals are the complete opposite of the Christian faith and that hate of any kind has no place in true Christianity.

However, those Christians who say this may want to consider the words of King David in the Psalms:

“Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.”

Psalm 139:21-22 (KJV)

God Both Hates and Loves Sinners

While anyone who reads this blog will know I have some disagreements with John Piper in some areas of theology, on this subject of hatred in regard to sin he has a great sermon and article about this entitled “God Loves the Sinner, But Hates the Sin?” where he states the following:

“The problem with the statement—“God loves the sinner, but hates the sin”—is that it is misleading. It is not a false statement. And what is misleading about it is the word but, but hates the sin, because but should be and. God loves the sinner and hates the sin. But implies he doesn’t hate the sinner—that is not true. God does hate sinners. Psalm 5:4: “You are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers.” Or Psalm 11:5: “The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.” So it is just not true to give the impression that God doesn’t hate sinners by saying he loves the sinner and hates the sin. He does hate sinners. His wrath is real. It is not something he pours out on people he approves of.

This infinite disapproval is what the Bible means when it says God hates sinners. He infinitely disap-proves of them. Sin is not sinful except as committed by sinful hearts. Sin is an expression of anti-God human corruption, human hearts. Sinful volitions are owing to sinful hearts. Sin doesn’t just hang out there with its own existence, it is in hearts or it is nothing. Sins do not suffer in hell, sinners suffer in hell. I wonder what people who say that believe about hell, because he is not punishing sin in hell, he is punishing sinners in hell. He hates—now here is the paradox—and he loves at the same time. For God so loved the world that he hates. Hate and love are simultaneous as God looks upon hateful, rebellious, corrupt, loathsome, wicked God-dishonoring sinners.

Now here is the distinctions we need to make. This is just so crucial. I hope people will listen carefully. Hate and love both have two meanings each. Hate can be intense loathing of a quality or hate can be be-yond that the intense intentionality to destroy. Love, similarly, can be an intense delighting in a quality and it can be an intense intentionality to bless even in spite of the presence of some unsavory quality.”

And now after showing Piper’s words on the subject of hatred in the Scriptures I will add a few thoughts of my own on this subject.

If we examine the Scriptures we will find a truth that is uncomfortable for many modern Americans. We are taught in our American culture that all forms of hate are bad and all forms of love are good. The Bible however, teaches something very different.

The Bible teaches that hate is sometimes holy and love is sometimes vile.

Consider these two passages from the Scriptures below which illustrate these twin truths:

“Ye that love the Lord, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked.“

Psalm 97:10 (KJV)

“26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.”

Romans 1:26-27 (KJV)

This is Both a Religious Issue and a Political Issue

I have quoted the following statement from Leviticus 20:13 multiple times on this blog in past articles and comments:

“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.“

While no punishment is prescribed for women in Lesbian relationships, the practice of Lesbian relationships is condemned by God in Romans 1:26. But the government could punish Lesbians in some way short of capital punishment.

However, God has granted the civil government the right to treat men having sex with men as a capital crime and Romans 13:4 says the following of the civil government’s authority by God to perform capital punishments for certain sins which he allows it for:

“For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.”

This power DOES NOT belong to individual citizens . There is no Biblical warrant for individual citizens to execute men for having sex with men, only the civil government has this power.

I understand where this Pastor was coming from and I partially agree with him. If we are talking about male homosexuals – then I 100% agree that the government has the right to make homosexuality a capital crime for men. If we are talking about female homosexuals, then I would support criminalization for female homosexuality short of capital punishment.

Conclusion

Many who even disagree with his statements have said it was his free speech right as well as religious freedom right to make the statements he did from his church pulpit. But as I have stated on this blog several times, there are others in this country that want to criminalize what this man did from his pulpit.

But these same people do not realize that if this man were to be led away in hand cuffs for what he stated from his pulpit that this would probably ignite a second American civil war just as there are a few other issues that would as well (like gun confiscation). So be careful of what you wish for (criminalizing Pastors preaching against homosexuality) because you may just reap the consequences of what you sow.

“My husband is having an emotional affair with his ex-girlfriend whom he got pregnant during our separation. How does the Bible say a wife should deal with a cheating husband?” This question was posed in one of two emails I have received recently from two different Christian wives.

This question above was part of an email I received from a woman that has commented on this blog calling herself “Soul Fruit Sister”. Below is larger excerpt from her email to me.

“My husband is having an emotional affair with his ex-girlfriend whom he got pregnant during our separation. How does the Bible say a wife should deal with a cheating husband? His ex-girlfriend also has a boyfriend and another child with the man she is with now as well.

I saw text messages from her to my husband asking our marriage was and him writing back that it has been stressful between us. I also saw texts from my husband telling her how great she is, how gorgeous she is, etc. Meanwhile, he has pretty much emotionally abandoned me, although he still has sex with me and requires me to give him oral sex whenever he feels like it.

I’ve tried talking to him about talking to her this way multiple times, calmly, and at first, he said he would stop. His mother even spoke to him about it, and he told her he would quit but as of recently he still continues to speak with her on a daily basis about things he should only be talking with me about. I found this out by looking at one of his old phone’s that he recently had switched over. I don’t normally go through his phone because he keeps it on him at all times and he would be furious if I tried too.

It is now to a point where I’ve tried talking to him about it, telling him how it hurts me and how I would like for him to start setting boundaries that would reestablish trust between us, but he just ignored me.

The Scriptures command us to expose evil. And in Matthew 18 we are told if a believer sins against us and refuses to repent after we have brought that sin to their attention, we should bring it to the church.

My husband claims to be a Christian, but his actions are clearly not those of a believer and he does not attend church. So, what then should my actions be?”

Below is another email I recently received from another Christian wife calling herself “Martha”:

“Dear BGR,

My husband claimed to be Christian many years ago when we got married. He was actually very active in our church and taught Sunday School at one point. But over the years he has fallen away from the church but still claims to be a Christian. He has not been to church now in several years. While he never drives drunk (but rather has me drive him), I am still not happy with the amount of drinking he does or how foolish he gets when he drinks. He also gets very flirtatious when he drinks.

So here is my problem, my husband travels for work often and recently he even admitted that some of his buddies have taken him to a strip club a few times when he has been away for work. He claims he did nothing with the girls, but how do I know that? I have seen places on your blog where you have said that a man going to a strip club is him having virtual sex even if he never touches the woman.My husband has at least had virtual sex with these strippers and in the worst case he actually engaged in physical sexual activity with them. How does the Bible say I should handle this as a Christian wife?”

So, what is the Biblical answer to the difficult situations that both these women find themselves in? What does the Bible say a Christian wife’s response should be to her cheating husband? Before we can answer this central question that both these wives are asking, we must put their question in perspective from a Biblical world view.

The Biblical Definition of a “Cheating Husband” is Different Than Our Modern Definition

Today most people, including Bible believing Christians, would define a cheating husband as a married man that is emotionally or physically intimate with a woman other than his wife. They will refer to such a man as an “adulterer”.

There are a small number of wives today that would not feel their marriage is threatened by their husband having an emotionally intimate relationship with another woman while the vast majority of women would feel threatened by this.

And the reality is that often when a man shares his emotions with a woman, eventually she shares her body – at least in the beginning of a new relationship between them. So, this concern that emotional intimacy between a husband and a woman other than his wife might lead to physical intimacy, is actually well founded.

But for most wives, it is not just the worry of their husbands engaging in physical intimacy with another woman. Most wives want be the person that their husband shares all of his feelings with from his joys to his sorrows and his worries.

Let me put this another way. For many women, their husband could never go near another woman emotionally or physically but if he holds back things from her, they also consider this to be “a breach of trust”.

It is not uncommon to hear of women divorcing their husbands, not because of sexual infidelity or abuse, but because of a breach of trust. Either the husband lied to his wife about various things or he held things back from her. Many wives want to know everything their husbands are thinking or doing and this is the center piece of marital faithfulness for many women.

I have actually heard of women that have no problem with their husbands going to strip clubs as long as they take their wife with them. Other women don’t even have to go with their husbands, as long as the husband always tells her when and where he is going. Some women even go so far as allowing their husbands to have sex with other women as long as the wife is present. The common denominator in these situations is simply that there are no secrets between the husband and wife and nothing is held back.

Again, this comes back to a woman’s concept of marital faithfulness which starts with complete and utter openness, no secrets, nothing withheld and then in most cases it extends to physical intimacy as well.

In other words, for the overwhelming vast majority of women today, their concept of marital faithfulness is that they own their husband’s heart and his body.

But as Bible believing Christians, we must test everything we believe or feel by the Word of God as the Scriptures exhort us to “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

Christian ladies, this is one of those times I am going to ask you to brace yourselves and take off your cultural lenses.

Nowhere in all the Bible is a married man called an adulterer simply because he is emotionally intimate or sexually intimate with a woman not his wife. But rather he is called an adulterer for the following three reasons:

If he has sex with another man’s wife and then his sin of adultery is committed against the husband of that wife, not his wife. (Leviticus 20:10, Deuteronomy 22:22)

In other words, based on the Biblical definition of an adulterer, a married man who has sex with an unmarried woman is NOT an adulterer, but rather he is a whoremonger. A married man can only be labeled as an adulterer if he has sex with another man’s wife or if he wrongly divorces his wife. Another way of putting this is the only way a married man’s behavior can Biblically be labeled as the sin of adultery against his wife is if he wrongly divorces her.

The Scriptures recognize this distinction between whoremongers and adulterers in Hebrews 13:14 where we read “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge”.

Some Christian wives may be reading this and saying “ok fine so my cheating husband is called a whoremonger by God and not adulterer. Who cares? He is still a cheating husband and committing marital unfaithfulness by his actions.”

But then we must ask what is the Biblical definition of marital faithfulness of man toward his wife?

A lot of Christian teachers online and in Christian pulpits across America say that a man having sex with women other than his wife is him committing adultery against her, an act of marital unfaithfulness and grounds for divorce. They say this based on Matthew 5:32 which we previously referenced:

“But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.”

Matthew 5:32 (KJV)

The problem is they are ignoring the gender specificity of this statement by Christ. Christ says a man may “put away his wife” for “fornication”.

And now comes a Biblical truth that completely conflicts with our American cultural values.

While Scripturally speaking, marital faithfulness for a woman toward her husband does hinge upon on her exclusively giving herself sexually to her husband there is no Biblical warrant for making the same statement of husbands toward their wives.

The reason that emotional and sexual exclusivity is never given as a criterion of marital faithfulness of a husband toward his wife is found in the following passage of the Bible:

“10 If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish. 11 And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money.”

Exodus 21:10-11 (KJV)

And there you have it right there in the Scriptures. The reason emotional and sexual exclusivity is never given as a criterion of marital faithfulness of a husband toward his wife is because God allows men to practice polygamy or specifically polygyny.

I realize there is a lot of opposition in the Christian world and elsewhere to polygamy. Often Christian preachers will say “polygamy was a sin God overlooked for a time”. But such a statement is an assault on the holy character of God. God never condones, regulates or allows something he considers to be sinful.

In Ezekiel 23:1-5 God pictures himself as a polygamist husband of two wives, those being the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. And in Romans 10:19 we read that God is taking on a new wife in the form of the Church to make his first wife, the nation of Israel, jealous so that she may return to him.

Those who oppose polygamy as an allowable extension of God’s design for marriage and insist that “God’s design was for a man to be married to one woman as seen in his creation of one wife for Adam” must then say God violated his own design in allowing and regulating the practice of polygamy for Israel.

And those who say “well God allowed divorce to and that was not part of his design” fail to recognize that God said he hates divorce in Malachi 2:16 but never in all the Scriptures does he say he hates polygamy or that he had to allow it because of sin.

And before we move on from this subject of polygamy back to the Biblical definition of martial faithfulness, I want to quickly address one other argument against the practice of Biblical polygamy. Some may say “Well maybe God allows polygamy for men, but the laws of various nations including the United States do not. Therefore, even though God allows men to practice polygamy they cannot because it is illegal by the law of the United States.”

The problem with this belief is that is built upon the false teaching that civil authorities are unlimited in their power. Many Christians believe the government can regulate and legislate any area of our lives as long as that regulation or law does not ask us to sin against God (Acts 5:29). But Christ taught us that civil government is actually limited in its scope when he made the following statement below:

“And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And they marvelled at him.”

Mark 12:17 (KJV)

Jesus did not say render to God everything that is God’s and everything else render to Caesar. No, my friends, he told us to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. God never granted authority over marriage to the either the civil government or the Church. Instead he granted authority over marriage to the family and specifically to fathers. This is why it is consistently seen throughout the Scriptures that fathers give or refuse their daughters for marriage (Jeremiah 29:6, Exodus 22:16-17) and neither the civil government nor church has any part in this.

Now, having proven from the Scriptures why emotional and sexual exclusivity is never given as a criterion of marital faithfulness of a husband toward his wife we will return to what God defines as marital faithfulness of a husband toward his wife.

Unlike how God defines marital faithfulness for a woman, marital faithfulness for a man has nothing to do with the exclusivity of his relationship with his wife, but rather it centers on his loving provision for his wife.

Marital faithfulness of a husband toward his wife is defined by God in Exodus 21:10-11 as a husband providing his wife with food, clothing and sexual relations.

So, we can see by looking at the Scriptures that like many other things today, our definition of a cheating husband is very different than God’s definition of a cheating husband.

God’s definition of a cheating husband is a man that does not provide his wife with the necessities of life including sexual relations.

The New Testament repeats the concepts we just read in Exodus 21:10-11 where we see these responsibilities of a husband toward his wife repeated in the following passages:

“28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. 29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church”

Ephesians 5:28-29 (KJV)

“3 Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. 4 The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. 5 Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.”

I Corinthians 7:3-5 (KJV)

The word “nourisheth” has the idea of provision which would correlate back to Exodus 21:10’s command that a man provide food for his wife. The word “cherisheth” does not carry the modern romantic definition of this word which has come to mean “putting one’s wife on a pedestal”. It actually has the idea of a mother hen keeping her eggs protected and warm which correlates back to Exodus 21:10’s command for a man to properly cloth his wife which would protect her body from the elements.

And Exodus 21:10’s call for men to perform their marital duty with their wives, or in other words give them sexual relations is restated in the passage above from I Corinthians 7:3-5.

Are You Saying it is OK for Husbands to Have Sex with Other Women?

Unless your husband is properly practicing Biblical polygamy in which he intends to continue to provide for you and new wives he takes no it is not OK for him to simply have sex with other women. To do so is by definition whoremongering which God says he will judge in Hebrews 13:4.

The reality is that most men in western culture will not or cannot practice Biblical polygamy because of cultural and financial obstacles to doing so. It does not make it wrong for the few men who can overcome both these obstacles, but the majority of men simply cannot.

Neither of the husbands mentioned in the two emails I received are attempting to practice Biblical polygamy.

Martha’s husband who is going to strip clubs is definitely engaging in a least virtual sexual relations in these clubs, if not actual physical sexual relations. Therefore, he being a whoremonger which is a sin against God’s law.

But what about Soul Fruit Sister’s husband and his emotional affair with his ex-girlfriend? That one is a bit trickier. Is he engaging in a virtual form of sexual relations with her? Right now, the answer appears to be no.

Is what he is doing still inappropriate? Yes. And here is the reason why.

While he may not be having virtual or physical sexual relations with this other woman, he may still be guilty of making “provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Romans 13:14) and putting himself in a position where some type of illicit sexual relationship could happen and this is why is actions are wrong.

How Should These Two Wives Deal with Their Husband’s Sins?

As I just stated, Martha’s husband by attending strip clubs is definitely committing the sin of whoremongering by engaging in at least virtual or physical sexual relations with strippers.

Soul Fruit Sister’s husband is making provision for himself to fall into sexual sin which is a sin in and of itself.

In the case of Martha’s husband which is clear cut case of sexual sin it would not be inappropriate for her to bring this to her church elders if her husband was church member. But my reasoning for this is not based on Matthew 18 which Soul Fruit Sister alluded to.

First let’s look at Matthew 18:15-17 (KJV):

“15 Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.16 But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.17 And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.”

Some Christians have wrongly interpreted Matthew 18:15-17 to mean we can go to our church elders anytime anyone in the church does even the slightest thing to us. If they won’t admit their fault to us in private, we can run to the church elders and tattle on them. But this is not what Christ is saying at all when we look at the entirety of the New Testament witness.

As Christians we must balance two principles.

On the one hand we are called to follow the Scriptural principle and example of Christ which in I Peter 2:19 states “For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully”. So, if our first instinct every time we are wronged in any way by a fellow believer is to run to the church and tattle on them then we are not following Christ’s example in suffering wrongly.

So, what is the standard of bringing one before the Church for Church discipline? The standard is given to us in the following passages of the Bible:

“11 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. 12 For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? 13 But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person. “

1 Corinthians 5:11-13 (KJV)

“And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed.”

2 Thessalonians 3:14 (KJV)

So, if a person is living an openly sinful lifestyle which includes him being a fornicator or if a person is a church member and telling people not to follow the Bible such people can be brought before the Church for discipline and possible expulsion if they refuse to repent.

So, in the case of Martha’s husband if he were a member of a church than his fornication at strip clubs would constitute an assault on the purity of the church. Therefore, she would be right in bringing his sin to the church.

But here is a key concept that must be understood. His sin of fornication is against God, not his wife. But that is the opposite of how most churches and Christians would approach this sin today.

Remember we have shown from the Scriptures that a husband can only commit adultery against his wife in one way and that is by seeking to divorce her for a reason other than her being sexually unfaithful to him. So, if a man wants to put his wife away, because his girl friend wants him to dump his wife and marry her this is absolutely something that should be brought before the church if he is a church member as it is a direct sin against his wife and also against God and the purity of the Church.

But in the case Soul Fruit Sister’s husband putting himself in a possible position to sexually sin I am not sure this rises to the level that she would bring this to the church if he were a member.

However, whether these husbands were both church members or not must realize the most the church can do is condemn their actions and expel them from the church if they will not repent. In either case of them being members or not of churches, the wives will still be left with the aftermath.

So how should a Christian wife deal with her husband’s whoremongering or even putting himself in a possible position to sexually sin because of inappropriate emotional intimacy with another woman?

The answer is found in the following passage of the Bible:

“1 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; 2 While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.

3 Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; 4 But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.

5 For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: 6 Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.”

I Peter 3:1-6 (KJV)

Would the two wives who wrote me agree that their husbands are not obeying the Word of God in the behavior they are engaging in? I think they absolutely would agree.

So then it would follow that If they agree that their husbands are in fact being disobedient to the Word of God then they must also agree with God’s prescription for how Christian wives should deal with the disobedience of their husbands including but not limited to the sin of whoremongering or making provision for the flesh to fulfill its desires.

And Gods prescription for how wives should deal with their disobedient husbands is to win them to God without preaching the Word at them, nagging them and shaming them. But rather he wants them to wind them by their pure and reverent behavior and to adorn themselves with a quiet and meek spirit.

This prescription for wives in dealing with the sin of their husbands is the exact opposite of what a wife’s sin nature will tell her to do and unfortunately it is also the exact opposite of what many Christian pastors and teachers will tell wives to do. But it is the truth of the Word of God.

Do I Still Have to Have Sex With My Whoremongering Husband?

I have seen many women throughout the years try and take the approach that since their husband is whoring around and might give them some sexually transmitted disease, even one that is fatal like the AIDs virus, that this gives them a free ticket to divorce their husband or at the very least refuse to have sex with him until his whoring stops and he is tested for STDs.

But let’s change the situation a bit. What if a woman’s husband worked for the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) or some other medical group where he traveled around the country or even around the world and it might be possible for him to contract a whole host of infectious diseases non-fatal and fatal alike? Would it be right for his wife to say she does not have to have sex with her husband because it might be too risky?

Now from a non-Biblical, secularist world view the answer here is simple. Your happiness as well as physical and mental health are the most important thing in the world. You don’t owe your husband sex or anything else for that matter that you don’t want to do. In fact if makes you happier, just leave the bum.

But God gives this command to both husbands and wives in marriage:

“Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband.“

I Corinthians 7:3 (KJV)

Except for limited agreed upon times for prayer, fasting or medical conditions like surgery, child birth or other things like that – a wife has no Biblical warrant to refuse to render under her body under her husband in the act of sex.

And if you are a woman that believes that God created you for a purpose and that the Bible is the Word of God and the guide for your life then your personal happiness and even health should not be your greatest concern. Your greatest concern should be to bring glory to God and sometimes that means suffering wrongly because of others wrong actions. We see the following example of Christ given to us in the Scriptures:

“21 For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:

22 Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: 23 Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: 24 Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.”

I Peter 2:21-24 (KJV)

Just as Christ bore the consequences of our sins, sometimes a wife must bare the consequences of her husband’s sins.

The Reality of Whoremongering Husbands Reveals A Sinful View of Marriage in Women

Often times in life one person’s sin will also reveal another person’s sin. For instance, sometimes we will find out after a man engages in whoremongering that his wife was sexually denying him for years before he ever committed the acts. This in no way justifies his sin, but this is an example of one sin in one person revealing the sin another person.

The central question of this article was how Christian women should deal with what our culture calls a “cheating husband”. There is no doubt that a whoremongering husband is sinning against God as we have pointed out here and we have just outlined the Biblical prescription for how Christian wives should deal with this.

However, the sinful reality of a whoremongering husband can also reveal our culture’s faulty and unbiblical view of marriage. And many Christian wives today have that sinful view of their marriage whether their husband ever engages in whoremongering or not. It is simply that whoremongering by a husband brings this faulty type of thinking of wives to the surface for all to see.

And that sinful view of marriage is rooted in the false belief that wives are entitled to their husbands centering their hearts, minds and affections solely on them. It is their belief that they are entitled to total transparency, to know their husbands every feeling and every thought. That in essence their husband’s heart, mind and life should belong to them exclusively.

God speaks of this sinful inclination in women in Genesis 3:16:

“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”

A lot of Christians do not understand what that last phrase means when God said to the woman “thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee”. Many people have seen the woman’s desire to her husband as a loving desire and Christian feminists present the phrase “he shall rule over thee” as saying man’s headship over woman was only because of the fall.

Both of the above interpretations of this very important passage of the Bible are wrong. God knew his words in Genesis 3:16 would come to be distorted so he used similar phrasing just one chapter later when speaking to Cain in Genesis 4:7:

“If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.”

Was God saying Sin’s desire for Cain was good? Absolutely not! Sin’s desire was to dominate and control him. God knew this so he told Cain that he must rule over his sin nature, otherwise his sin nature would desire to control and dominate his life.

So, looking back at Genesis 3:16 in light of what God said to Cain, what kind of sinful desire was God saying a woman would have toward her husband?

The sinful desire God is referring to in women is their desire to know their husband’s every thought and to have his complete desire, affection and really life’s focus be on them and them alone.

The scary thing is – what I have just stated is now the central philosophy of modern marriage counseling and teaching both within the church and outside the church. And it this modern ideology which totally turns the Biblical model of marriage upside down. Does the Bible say the husband was created for his wife or does it say his wife was created for him?

The Scriptures have an unambiguous answer for this question.

“Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.”

I Corinthians 11:9 (KJV)

Conclusion

In the case of a whoremongering husband a wife may have to bring this to the Church if he is a church member. But her motive in doing this should not be from a position that he has sinned against her in his whoremongering or adultery if he has been with another man’s wife. But rather that he has sinned against God and possibly another man in taking his wife and his sin is polluting the purity of the Church.

But if he is not a church member or he has been excommunicated from the Church she has no biblical right to divorce him. Instead God calls her to continue to submit to him and attempt to win him to God by her reverence and pure life style that she displays before him.

And a wife must also remember that often as God reveals the sinful actions of her husband, he may also reveal the sinful inclinations in her heart to be possessive and controlling toward her husband thus forgetting her place in God’s creation order.

A Christian mother and regular reader of my blog asked “Would society be better if we returned to the standard that girls could marry as soon as they menstruated and were capable of having kids?” To ask such a question in America in the year 2019 seems patently absurd. Of course, society would NOT be better off if girls could marry as soon as they menstruated! Before we go further to address the obvious absurdity of this woman’s question here is the full email from her below.

Here is the complete email I received from a woman calling herself Rebekah:

“Long time reader, first time writer. First, I want to thank you for your trenchant insights, observations, and monologues. It’s great to find a man with such a passion for Christ and a traditional way of life. I’m a married mother with 3 daughters (12, 13, and 16) and (15) one son and my hubby and I are raising them to be good Christians and to abide by traditional gender roles.

I recently had a discussion with my husband about the expectation for marriage and we wondered, would society be better if we returned to the standard that girls could marry as soon as they menstruated and were capable of having kids? My two eldest daughters are certainly capable, and they are very motherly already.

What is your opinion?”

Why do such statements as the ones above evoke such a sense of righteous indignation from most of us in modern America and Western culture? We will discuss these reasons next.

Why Modern Society Disapproves of the Pubescent Marriage of Women

“Child marriages involving only one marriage partner below the age of 18, usually the female, are also quite common. Throughout history till the 20th century, child marriages were the norm in most parts of the world. With the average life expectancy during such times being only 40 to 45 years of age, child marriages were the faster way to reproduce. Girls were usually married off as soon as they reached puberty or sometimes even prior to that.”

In the same article they mention in addition to shorter life expectancies that there were often economic reasons as well:

“Over the years, a large number of reasons have been suggested as triggers behind the practice of child marriage. Economic problems have been one of the primary factors that have forced parents to marry off their young girls. The system of dowry prevailing in many countries where parents of girls have to bestow hefty sums of money or expensive goods and ornaments to the in-laws’ families of their daughters have led to the consideration of the girl child as a burden in such households. However, the high demand of young girls in the marriage market have helped parents marry off their girl child to an older man, often receiving money in return, allowing them to overcome the burdens of dowry and even economically benefiting from the process.”

But in the same article we then find the reasons for our modern Western society’s disapproval of marriage for women of pubescent age:

“Child marriage is associated with scientifically established adverse effects to the young female child’s health. Pregnant girls below the age of 15 have a 5 to 7 times higher chance of dying during childbirth as compared to pregnant women in their twenties. Child mothers are also more susceptible to develop obstetric fistula, cervical cancer, sexually transmitted diseases and other health problems. Infant mortality rates are also 60% higher in case of children born of mothers who are below the age of 18 years. Child marriage usually deprives the female child of educational rights, leading to the loss of financial independence of the child in her future. Child brides are also susceptible to domestic violence, marital rapes and sexual abuse as they are not mature enough to protest and not independent enough to escape adverse situations in their conjugal life.”

So young mothers under 15 having 5 to 7 times higher of a chance of dying from their pregnancy should be enough for all us to oppose pubescent marriage for young girls, right?

And then what about the fact these poor young girls may be deprived of education rights which will lead to a loss of financial independence from their future husbands? And their higher susceptibility to tolerate future abuse from their future husbands?

Is this not an open and shut case against the marriage of pubescent age women?

Well before we can totally wrap up our conclusion, we need to tie up a few “loose ends”.

Putting Maternal and Infant Mortality Rates in Perspective

Two of the “loose ends” we need to tie up are maternal and infant mortality rates. Previously we were told one of the reasons we should oppose the marriage of pubescent age women is because women in this age group have higher chances of dying from child birth and their infants have a higher chance of dying after birth within the first year.

The sad news for us as Christians and those who value human life is that 46 million of those pregnancies are ended by the murderous act of abortion. That means 165 million women continue with their pregnancies. Of those 165 million pregnancies, 123 million will be “successful”, meaning that the mother gives birth and the child survives.

About 302,950 women die each year worldwide from pregnancy. That means women worldwide have a 0.2 percent chance dying from pregnancy related health problems or on the other hand they have a 99.8 percent chance of dying from pregnancy.

The key numbers to take away from this section on maternal and infant mortality rates are that in total 0.2percent of women who get pregnant and do not murder their unborn children later die as a result of their pregnancies. A total of 2 percent of infants worldwide will die before they reach their first birthday. And statistically speaking the vast majority of these deaths that occur in both these categories occur in Africa. The saddest number of all these numbers is of course the worldwide purposeful murder of 22 percentof children in their mother’s womb by the act that modern civilization calls abortion.

The Societal Impact of Economic and Social Independence for Women

Another “loose end” we need to tie up has to do with women’s social and economic independence from men. After all that is good thing, right?

For most of the history of mankind, with few exceptions, women were economically and socially tied to their fathers or their husbands and were considered the property of their fathers or husbands. Women could not own property and if they did inherit property it would come under their husband’s authority upon marriage. In divorce fathers retained full custody of the children.

The fact that women could not own property, could not easily divorce their husbands and when they did divorce, they had to leave without their children and without any property or income was a strong incentive for women to stay with their husbands.

This all changed in the mid-19th century with the rise of feminism. It began with women suing in the courts for the right to own property as men did. Then in the late 19th century the historic custom of fathers retaining full custody of their children was reversed and full custody was given to the mother. Fathers did not gain back at least joint custody rights until almost a century later in 1960s.

Now the incentives that brought women to marriage to men, and kept women in marriage to men had been all but destroyed.

It was also during this time that women began to throw of the authority of their fathers in courting and began the new practice of “dating”. Men and women entering marriage based on the historic principles of faith, duty, honor and economics gradually was replaced with men and women entering marriage simply for “love” – which was really just infatuation.

And since women had come to gain alimony, child support, and property rights there was little incentive for them to stay in marriage to a man once the infatuation wore off. This caused divorce rates to sky rocket from 3 percent before the rise of feminism in the mid-19th century to 13 percent by the time woman’s suffrage was ratified in 1920 in the United States.

Anna Howard Shaw, one of the champions of first wave feminism made the following statement in the February 25th, 1915 edition of the New York Evening Post:

“I believe in woman suffrage, whether all women vote or no women vote; whether all women vote right or all women vote wrong; whether women will love their husbands after they vote or forsake them; whether they will neglect their children or never have any children at all.”

Anna Howard Shaw summed up the goals of the political feminists’ movements of the 19th and early 20th century. The total liberation and independence of women from men no matter what the costs to society. Country, marriage and motherhood and children could all be destroyed to meet their goals. The only thing that mattered was women having complete and utter control of their lives.

And what cost did we pay as a nation? Well Anna Howard Shaw’s words came true. Women gained the right to vote and even gained the right to force men to hire them for any positions they wanted. And in 1973 they gained the right to murder their unborn children under the guise of total bodily autonomy.

The social and economic independence of women in America has directly led to rampant sexual immorality, the decline of marriage, over 60 million divorces and over 60 million abortions.

The Arguments Against the Marriage of Pubescent Women Are Faulty

Well it seems that in our effort to tie up loose ends regarding opposition to pubescent women marrying we have instead unraveled the entire ball of yarn.

Before I show how the arguments against pubescent women marrying are faulty, I want to explain some terminology I have been using. The way we label something or someone can very much affect how we view that something or someone. For instance, those of us who oppose abortion as a right for women call ourselves “prolife” while those who believe abortion is a right for women call themselves “prochoice”. Prolife advocates such as myself call the child a “baby” from the moment it is conceived while Prochoice advocates will refer to the child based on his or her biological stages of development with such words as “zigote” or “embryo” or “fetus” in an attempt to dehumanize the human being growing inside his or her mother’s womb.

In the same way when having this argument about the age of marriage for women those who oppose marriage for women before the age of 18 will call all marriage before the age of 18 “Child Marriage”. But is 16 or 17-year-old female or male human being for that matter, a child? The answer biologically speaking is no.

Human beings go through a transition phase from child to adult and this transition phase is called puberty. Children are human beings in the prepubescent stage of development. Adolescents are human beings that are at some stage of puberty. When the changes of puberty are complete the human adolescent becomes a human adult. Girls typically start puberty around the age of 11 while some start as early as 9 or 10 and they typically complete puberty by the age of 14. Boys start a little later than girls typically around the age of 12 and they finish puberty around the age of 16 or 17.

Those who say a female human being who has experienced the major changes of puberty which are the development of breasts, pubic hair and the start of menstruation is a child are stating a biological falsehood. Such a female human being is no longer a child(prepubescent human being), but rather she is either an adolescent (pubescent human being) or an adult(postpubescent human being).

This is why I have consistently referred to this argument as one being about the “the marriage of pubescent women” because a female human being who has experienced the changes of puberty is no longer a child.

When we acknowledge the fact that worldwide a total of 0.2 percent of women die from pregnancy related deaths, and that includes pubescent mothers, then the even if they represent a higher proportion of that 0.2 percent it does not make a strong case against pubescent women marrying. Instead we can respond with that fact that at least 99.8 percent of pubescent women worldwide will survive their pregnancies.

When we acknowledge the fact that only 2 percent of all infants worldwide die in the first year of their life and even if children from pubescent mothers make up more of that 2 percent than children from postpubescent women, we can rightly say pubescent mothers have at least a 98 percent chance of their children surviving their first year of life. A difference somewhere within the 2 percent range between two groups of women having their children survive is not a strong argument against pubescent women marrying.

Some may respond that these are numbers that mix the developed world and undeveloped worlds. But let me remind you of the WHO numbers which stated even in sub-Saharan Africa, which has the highest MMR in the world, only 500 women out of 100,000 died from pregnancy related complications in a given year over the last decade.

Then we come to other social reasons for opposition to marriage for pubescent women.

One of those reasons is that these pubescent women will have a “the loss of financial independence” from their husbands most likely because they do not finish high school and the college and get careers before marrying.

But based on the stats I just showed which correlate the granting of economic rights to women with the destruction of marriage by disincentivizing women to seek and stay in marriage to men is “the loss of financial independence” for women a bad thing? The answer if we believe that lasting marriages form the bedrock of a stable civilization must be NO.

And finally, what about the assertion that pubescent brides are more “susceptible to domestic violence, marital rapes and sexual abuse as they are not mature enough to protest and not independent enough to escape adverse situations in their conjugal life”? Is this a strong enough argument on its own for us to oppose pubescent women marrying?

Are there some men that truly do abuse their wives, whether they enter marriage as pubescent women or as postpubescent women? Absolutely. But again, we must put things in perspective. Just as we cannot toss out women getting pregnant because a tiny fraction of women may die from pregnancy so to, we cannot throw out marriage for pubescent women because of the sad fact that a higher fraction of a tiny percentage of pubescent women will be truly abused.

Now that I have shown the arguments against pubescent women marrying to be faulty and weak, we will now present strong arguments for the marriage of pubescent women.

Why We Should Support the Practice of Pubescent Marriage

I have previously shown from a biological perspective it is incorrect to refer to a human being that is going through puberty or one that has finished puberty as a child. Therefore, it is utterly wrong to label it as “Child marriage” when a pubescent woman enters marriage.

Before the last century human societies recognized three primary social classes of human beings. Men, Women and Children. Once children entered puberty, they were basically considered either men or women. The concept of a “teenager” is a more recent invention over the last century.

Boys were considered men around the ages of 12 to 13 and this is why it was the norm for these young men to begin their trade in their early teen years so they could save their money, buy their own land and build a home. Once they did this, usually by their late teens or early 20s, they would seek out a wife for marriage. For girls, as soon as they developed breasts and began menstruating, they were considered women and ready for marriage and child bearing.

Many will argue that just because a young woman is biologically ready for marriage and child bearing, does not mean she is mature enough mentally for marriage and child bearing.

So how do we answer the question of when a person is ready for marriage? Is it by looking to how civilizations have done things in the past? Is it by looking to current studies?

The answer, first and foremost for us as Christians, is to look to the Word of God.

“But if any man think that he behaveth himself uncomely toward his virgin, if she pass the flower of her age, and need so require, let him do what he will, he sinneth not: let them marry.”

1 Corinthians 7:36 (KJV)

The phrase “the flower of her age” refers to when a woman has her period. The Apostle Paul is telling us here that the minimum of age of marriage is when a woman has her first period.

However, we must take the complete witness of the Scriptures together to determine when is the acceptable “time of love” for a young woman – as in marriage and sex.

“7 I have caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments: thy breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare.

8 Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest mine.”

Ezekiel 16:7-8 (KJV)

So, it is not until a young girl demonstrates all the signs of puberty, the growth of breasts, pubic hair and having a period that she is ready for marriage. With most young women, their first period comes after the development of their breasts and pubic hair while in some rare cases the period may come first. But the Scriptures show us that all three of these elements are required.

In fact, in another Scripture we read that if a woman was completely flat chested and had no breasts, she would have a difficult time marrying (even if she had her first period):

“We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?”

Song of Solomon 8:8 (KJV)

The point here is that God tells us when a woman develops breasts, grows pubic hair and has her period she is ready for marriage by God’s law.

But we must also recognize that God gives a father discretion as to when his daughter is ready for marriage:

“Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished.”

Jeremiah 29:6 (KJV)

“16 And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. 17 If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins.”

Exodus 22:16-17 (KJV)

The passages above show us that fathers have the responsibility to prepare their daughters for marriage and be looking for suitable husbands for their daughters while at the same time they have the right of refusal for their daughter for marriage as well.

“The biological reality that female fertility peaks in the teens and early 20s can be difficult for many American women to swallow, as they delay childbirth further every year, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. In the District, the average age of initial childbirth was 26.5 years in 2006, up 5.5 years since 1970, the highest jump in the country…

“While we may not be mature enough to conceive at a young age, nor should we, that is still when the body is most adept at conception and carrying a baby,” says Claire Whelan, program director of the American Fertility Association. “Our biological clock has not kept pace with our ability to prolong our life spans.” Stillman agrees, pointing out that research about advanced maternal age and motherhood today is clear: The older you get, the more difficult it is to get pregnant and the higher the chance of miscarriage, pregnancy problems such as gestational diabetes and hypertension, and chromosomal abnormalities such as Down syndrome, among other concerns…

“Society has changed, ” says Stillman, “but the ovaries will take another million years or two to catch up to that.””

Notice how she has to preface her acknowledgement of the biological reality of when women are “most adept at conception and carrying a baby” with her value judgment that “While we may not be mature enough to conceive at a young age, nor should we”.

As Christians we know that the Bible says in Genesis 1:27 that “male and female created he them”. And we know God is not going to change a woman’s ovaries to match our societal changes.

Instead our society must turn back to God so that our society matches the way he designed us as males and females both physiologically and psychologically. And the way we begin that change is in one Christian home at time.

Early Teen Women Are More Moldable

In the Scriptures we read the following passage from the Book of Jeremiah:

“1 The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying,

2 Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. 3 Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. 4 And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.

5 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 6 O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.”

Jeremiah 18:1-6 (KJV)

In the above passage God is speaking to Israel as his wife. The phrase “O house of Israel” is used in other passages like this one below when God refers to Israel as his wife and he as her husband:

“Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the Lord.”

Jeremiah 3:20 (KJV)

Just as God sought to mold his wife Israel to be the person, he wanted her to be, so to for a marriage to be successful a woman must be very moldable just like clay in the hands of a potter.

When women are in their early teens, they typically are more moldable but as they get older into their late teens and especially early 20s, they become much harder to mold or change in their person and habits.

And make no mistake this is EXACTLY why most people today oppose women marrying very young because they know they are so impressionable or moldable at that age. They don’t want men being able to mold young women so they want to delay marriage as a long as possible pushing it into the early and mid-20s.

Christians who follow this false philosophy that young women need “find themselves” and “be their own person” before marriage are going against God’s design.

Remember that God says marriage is a picture of Christ and the Church. Does Christ mold his church? You bet he does. And he tells men to love their wives as he does:

“25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.”

Ephesians 5:25-27 (KJV)

We are often told today that if a man attempts to mold or change his wife’s behavior at all that he is “controlling” and this bad. We are told that if a man truly loves his wife, he won’t try to change anything about her.

Well I can tell you based on the authority of the Scriptures above that if a man does not attempt to mold and shape his wife to present her to himself and to God as a glorious wife in the same way Christ does his church then he is not loving his wife as Christ loves the church.

And yes, it takes a sacrifice on our part as men and courage on our part as men to “rebuke and chasten” (Revelation 3:19) our wives as Christ does his churches. But when done in the correct spirit, such rebuke and chastening by husbands is called “love”.

Conclusion

Rebekah so here is the answer to your question – “Would society be better if we returned to the standard that girls could marry as soon as they menstruated and were capable of having kids?”

The answer first from the Bible is “YES”. But the like many other times we can see how God’s design plays out when we follow it and also when we disobey it. No one can argue with the cold hard facts that giving women independence from men in general and their fathers and husbands in particular has been good for the institution of marriage which God designed.

By taking away women’s dependence on men we have allowed women to dominate marriage and our society. Society is now ordered around how people feel rather than duty to God, family and country.

And the invention of the “teenager” as an extension of childhood has not been good for our society. It has led to rampant immorality and a complete lack of responsibility among our young people today.

I don’t think you were actually asking if your husband could do this but just if society would be better if we all turned back to this custom of marriage for young women.

However, if your daughters have demonstrated the signs God says that mark “the time of love” for a woman in that they have developed breasts, pubic hair and have begun menstruating and if your husband feels they are mature enough and ready for marriage there would be no sin in allowing them to marry.

Believe it or not there are still 15 states that allow marriage below the age of 14:

California

Colorado

Idaho

Louisiana

Maine

Massachusetts

Michigan

Mississippi

Nevada

New Mexico

Oklahoma

Pennsylvania

Washington

West Virginia

Wyoming

Also, several states allow 14, and 15-year old people to marry as well.

Answering the Scoffers

One of my favorite scoffers, Suzanne Titkemeyer, wrote a piece the other day about my review of the Handmaids Tale. I always chuckle a little when I read her stuff.

I will cover just a few areas that I think apply to this article in regards to the age of marriage.

Suzanne wrote:

“Why is it always these creeps, like Vaughn Ohlman,imaging young burgeoning breasts and periods as a marker for readiness? Notice that none of them view young boys of that age as ready for marriage. When they talk of men marrying it’s always men over the age of 21, while saddling them with a much too young girl.”

Suzanne, it is not me imaging breasts and periods as a marker for readiness, but rather the word of God which clearly states it as I showed above from Ezekiel 16:7-8 and 1 Corinthians 7:36. You may reject the Bible but it is my basis for truth.

And before I knew and understood these Scriptures and studied the history of the world, biology and marriage I probably would have agreed with you that early teens is too young for marriage for women. But back then I would have been going by what you are – my feelings and my culture. Instead of looking at marriage first through the lenses of the Bible, then history and biology. All of which support young marriage for women.

Also, on your view of boys. I don’t think they have to be over 21, although I think in most cases it would be wiser for them to wait. Why? Because they have to lead a woman and their family and they have to be able to provide for and protect their family. Especially on the provision front, for most young men it takes well into their early or mid-20s until they are ready to provide for a family. My 19-year-old son who is plumber is an exception. He makes over 60 K a year and could support a family. But he has to get some other things in line first.

I know you struggle with this concept, but young men and young women are different. They are designed by God for different roles. A young woman does not have to lead a home or provide for one. She simply has to manage it, therefore she can marry much younger than a man. Besides it is a biological fact as I showed above the early teens to the early 20s are “when the body is most adept at conception and carrying a baby”. I also showed that studies arguing for higher pregnancy related deaths or other health problems are using statistically insignificant differences between pubescent mothers and postpubescent mothers.

Suzanne wrote:

“In the United States this age can come at a very young time in a girl’s life. Menstruation ages have dropped, meaning what Larry is proposing here is that girls as young as 9 could be married.”

No not really. I have said on multiple occasions that I like the Jewish rule of minimum age of 12. The truth is that is extremely rare for a 9-year-old to have a period but then you are leaving out several other key factors in order to build your straw-man argument. I said the minimum age of marriage requires ALL of the following things – not just a girl having her period. She must have developed breasts, pubic hair, had a period AND her father must determine she is ready.

Suzanne wrote:

“My own cycle started at 11 years old, and I can tell you I was nowhere near ready to marry. I was still playing with my Barbies, riding my horse, going to Camp Fire Girls meetings, and giggling over how cute Donny Osmond was. My only adult actions and responsibilities revolved around caring for my horse.

Little girls should be free to ride their horses, or play with their dolls and coloring books, not forced into lifetime relationships and sex. We’ve talked about this so much here that I’m not even going to cite the statistics again that show how early marriage harms girls in every way, physically, emotionally, financially.”

Do you know why you were no nowhere near ready to marry at age 11 including manage a home and take care of children? Because you were raised in a culture that has vastly extended childhood far beyond what cultures in the past did. If you were raised in pre-modern times, especially medieval or ancient times you absolutely would have been preparing for marriage at 11 and most likely be married by 12 or 13.

You see that is one of the many differences between your world view and mine. You believe the purpose of little girls and by extension women is to live for themselves. Have fun and do whatever makes you happy (at a particular moment, because we know that changes every five minutes).

But other people who believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, such as myself, believe we were put here for more than riding horses and playing with toys. We believe life is about duty and honor and serving God. Sure, we can have happiness along the way, but if that is our central focus, we will not serve God.

And speaking of happiness. We understand a truth that utterly escapes most secularists and you as well. We understand that happiness is not simply a feeling, but it is also a choice. We can choose to be happy in whatever circumstances life brings us. This is special kind of joy that few people know or understand. We can choose to let God and his Word lead our hearts, instead of letting our hearts lead us.

I pray one day you will come to know these truths and accept Christ and his Word as they are and not as you would have them be.

As Bible believing Christians, we can often become disheartened by the LGBTQ political movements and their assault on marriage, the family and our faith. And we rightly reject the world’s notion that “all love is good” because the Bible tells us there are such things as “vile affections” in Romans 1:26-27.

But it is stories like this one below that should give us hope and they show that Christ can heal us from any sin if we turn to him in faith and repent asking for his strength.

“Sixteen years ago, Brian Wheelock was fully immersed in the homosexual lifestyle of pornography, lust, and self-gratification. Despite being convinced that he was “born this way” and that his identity was as a “gay man,” he sensed deep down inside that he was unhappy and that he had been created for something more.

“To me it was empty, and a place of depression for me where I just wasn’t fulfilled,” Wheelock told a crowd of ex-homosexual and ex-transgender men and women at the Second Annual ‘Freedom March’ in Washington D.C. on the weekend.

That’s when he made a promise to God that changed his life forever…

“People sometimes ask me ‘so praying this prayer made you straight?’” said Wheelock. “Great question. No. Praying this prayer allowed me to find Jesus and fully focus on him and what He had planned for me. It would take a few more years of staying close to Jesus that He would finally allow me to meet the girl of my dreams, my soul mate, Pam.”

I encourage you to read the whole article above about the daily process and journaling he went through to keep his focus on Christ and his will for his life.

David said in Psalm 51:10:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”

And this is what this man asked the Lord to do in his life and he did it.

As believers we must also realize that this principle applies not just to those who must battle against the temptations of homosexuality and transgenderism but it also applies to those of us who consider ourselves “straight”.

We also must battle against sexual temptation and a culture that winks and laughs about sex, even heterosexual sex, outside of marriage. We must also battle against a culture which conditions us to think gender does not matter when it matters very much to God and he designed our two genders for specific and distinct purposes.

So maybe you are a man that is “straight” but you lack the courage to lead, protect and provide for a woman in marriage. Or perhaps you are a woman that that is “straight” but you are full of pride and selfish ambition when you should be humble and seeking to be ambitious for what God wants you to do which is to submit to and serve your husband as the Church submits to and serves Christ.

In either case, God can do for you what he did for this gay man and he can create in you in a clean heart and renew within you a right spirit if you will only repent and ask him to do this for you.